By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — Maybe it wasn’t historic, but it was big. Watauga men’s basketball surprised Northwestern Conference power and season leader coming into the game, Freedom, 98-80, on Jan. 17 in Lentz Eggers Gym.
Behind Grant Morrison’s 13 points in just the first quarter, Watauga jumped out to a 25-16 lead at the end of the first stanza, then kept the proverbial pedal to the metal in finishing off the Patriots. The visitors from Morganton posted a strong third quarter in trying to rally back, but Watauga survived that, and then some.
Morrison finished the game with a team-high 27 points, one of six Pioneers scoring in double figures in the high flying contest. Wyatt Keller matched Morrison’s four 3-pointers, finishing with 16 points, while Wyatt Kohout added a pair of long distance shots from beyond the arc, adding 13 points to the Watauga total. Jackson Pryor and Maddox Greene offered 12 each, while Josiah Railey and freshman Cade Keller contributed 11 and 7, respectively.
Greene played a key role in the fourth quarter as the Patriots were looking to foul and get the ball back on any missed free throws by the Pioneers. Time and again, Watauga’s players got the ball into Greene’s hands where he waited to be fouled, then took advantage by going a perfect 10-for-10 from the charity stripe.
Freedom’s Amore Connelly tallied a game-high 31 points and teammate Philly Harris poured in 21 to lead the visiting Patriots.
It had been seven years since the Pioneers defeated the Patriots, 53-48, Feb. 11, 2016, at Lentz Eggers Gym. A month earlier, on Jan. 5, Freedom had defended its home court with a narrow, 79-76 win. The Watauga roster in the 2015-16 season was comprised of Caleb Bryson, Aaron Dobbins, Michael Ebaugh, Jeremy Ringler, Zach Valet, Bryant Greene, Jerron Mills, Corey West, Alex Marinakis, Jonathan McClannon, Dillon Carmichael, Kevin Kapral and Holden Russell, under the direction of head coach Rob Sanders.
Emerging from the locker room after the game to meet with reporters, a smiling current head coach, Bryson Payne, had just been “showered” by his players with the iconic Gatorade bucket and not a care in the world about the extra dry cleaning bill.
“It is something that we have been talking about all year,” said Payne in opening his remarks, “that preparation is always going to help you or catch up to you. There have been some times when we haven’t been prepared like we felt we needed to be and it caught up to us. A couple of those losses came in games we think we should have won but we didn’t play our best. Hopefully, we learned some lessons from it.”
Preparation may well have been the key to the Pioneers’ win over Freedom on Jan. 17.
“We had a good practice yesterday and a good practice on Friday with last week’s games moved up to Thursday. We were able to come out tonight and put a full game together,” said Payne.
Last week’s win over Hibriten, in similar fashion, seemed to help.
“Our guys, for the most part, are pretty confident in themselves and their abilities,” said Payne. “What the Hibriten game really did was help us get past the Alexander Central game where we felt like we didn’t play as well as we could have and they played pretty well that night. So it was kind of a double negative on us. The win over Hibriten helped us build some of that confidence back and that carried over to tonight.”
Payne shared that the team’s preparations were “nothing special.”
“We just worked on handling pressure, execution, boxing out. Freedom’s ‘MO’ is that they want to put up a lot of points, run in transition and play a fast-paced game. So we wanted to try and slow them down, but we like to play fast, too. We didn’t necessarily slow them down, but defensively we made them shoot some tougher shots. We did well rebounding, and were successful in converting those rebounds into points at the other end… Our guys can compete with anybody as long as they come out and do the things we want to do.”
Next up for the Pioneers is an away game on Jan. 20 at Ashe County. The Huskies are 6-11 overall and 0-4 in Northwestern Conference play to date, with losses to league opponents South Caldwell, Freedom, Hibriten and Alexander Central.
SCORING SUMMARY
- Amore Connelly (31)
- WAT Grant Morrison (27)
- FRE Philly Harris (21)
- WAT Wyatt Keller (16)
- WAT Wyatt Kohout (13)
- WAT Maddox Greene (12)
- WAT Jackson Pryor (12)
- WAT Josiah Railey (11)
- FRE Kayden Lytle (10)
- WAT Cade Keller (7)
- FRE Dyson Dellinger (7)
- FRE Gavin McNaughton (4)
- FRE Braxton King (4)
- FRE Keegan Clark (3)
